Links

Articles

News

Reviews

Amateur Theatre

Contact

Other Resources

Bookstore

Forum

Search the Site

Dateline: 22nd June, 2008

Fringe Comedy Festival Row

The four largest Edinburgh Fringe venues - Assembly, Gilded Balloon, Pleasance and Underbelly - have combined to launch what they are calling the Edinburgh Comedy Festival on the Fringe. A statment on the website and in the brochure says:

To make room for the favourites and to make yet more room for the rising stars, Edinburgh needed this: the radical creation of a new festival-within-a-festival, separated but integrated, with space and resources to nurture and display the finest comedic talents under the joint banners of the most prestigious venues in town.

So welcome, please, to the 2008 inaugural Edinburgh Comedy Festival, in which Assembly, Gilded Balloon, Pleasance and Underbelly are collaborating to showcase every style of contemporary comedy - be it stand-up, sketch, improv, poetry, musical or comic theatre. One clear selection, on one concise website, to help you make your choices. And to make it easier still to plan ahead: all tickets, to all shows, can be bought at all our box offices.

However not everyone is happy. According to a report in the Scotsman, Edinburgh City Council is actively considering cancelling agreements for next year with the Assembly and Underbelly (venues which are owned by the city), if the new min-festival is damaging to other venues. The council is worried that the Fringe brand may be "diluted" and that venues which are not part of the Comedy Festival, but are staging comedy may suffer. Another worry is that, as one 'insider' told The Scotsman, "The Comedy Festival could up sticks from Edinburgh completely from next year and decant to another city."

William Burdett-Coutts, who runs the Assembly, has already threatened to pull out of the Fringe by 2010 is the council goes ahead with its plans to redevelop the Assembly Rooms to make it into a year-round arts venue, about which he said he was not consulted. He claims the revamp will reduce the number of venues from six to three and severely affect the bar takings.

|A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M|N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z|

News Archive A-L
News Archive M-Z
Production News Archive

Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.

©Peter Lathan 2008